314 



THIRD ANNUAL SESSIONS 



and theories that are "so beautiful that they are their own excuse for 

 being." But the fact that the conclusions arrived at by these experts 

 will be the consensus of opinion of a considerable number of trained 

 specialists, serves to completely eliminate the personal element and 

 ought to give greater weight to their conclusions than would attach 

 to any other body of investigators along the same line, not so much on 

 account of individual superiority as investigators, but because they have 

 better facilities for carrying on their investigations over a wide area un- 

 der a system that subjects the work of each, to rigid scientific scrutiny 

 of all the others. 



It must not be understooid that the work of these investigators is pri- 

 marily desitructive, for such is not the case. Their work is constructive 

 and conservative. Theirs will be a search for the truth, and any fact, 

 theory or system that will stand test of rigid scientific methods will be 

 welcomed by them, no matter wbat its source. 



Government Co-Operation. 



A residence of twenty-five years in the Great Plains, during all of 

 which time I was in close touch with the agricultural problems, con- 

 vinced me that no progress could be made toward a solution of the fun- 

 damental problems of dry land agriculture until a large number of 

 trained experts could carry on thoroughly systematized investigations at 

 a considerable number of representative stations distributed over a wide 

 area having somewhat similar soil and climatic conditions and that these 

 investigations must be continued uninterruptedly for a long term of 

 years. When I was called to Washington to organize the work in dry 

 land agriculture investigations, I accordingly established the work on 

 this basis. I first planned the co-operation of trained experts on soil 

 physics, meteorology, chemistry, plant physiology, plant breeding, cereal 

 investigations, and later pomology, forestry and animal husbandry. L 

 then thought of, and, in some instances obtained, co-operation with the 

 state experiment stations throughout the Great Plains area. We have 

 now eleven stations in successful operation, seven of which are in co- 

 operation with state experiment stations and four of them independent. 



The general T>lan of work for all the stations is the same, so the 

 results obtained at each station are strictlv comparable with those of all 

 the others. Greiat care was taken in the selection of the land in order to 

 secure uniformity and work has, in every way, been conducted accord- 

 ing to the most approved methods. At each station -from 75 to 150 plats 

 are used for investigations on crop rotation and cultivation methods. 

 They are divided into three groups. One for testing methods of soil 

 preparation, continuous cropping with and without special precaution 

 for moisture conservation, alternate cropping and summer tillage; one-^ 

 for testing the effect of crop sequence and time of plowing; and one 

 for testing the effect of humus of conservation by the plowing under of 

 green manure crops, both legumes and non-legumes being used. 



